which brings happiness to those who know it and misery and failure to those ignorant of it—and is the capital of the eminent? Yet the most that a fair-minded scholar among you can do is acknowledge that your balance is incapable of weighing it. As for the general run of your scholars, they deny and reject it. Even if your logic refutes them, your distortion of its nature leaves you no better off than the Jews and Christians in their distortion of Allah’s Book, which, in its original form, is undoubtedly true and a source of guidance. Such, then, is the case. There is no power or strength except through Allah.

Moreover, they agree that it yields only universals posited in the mind. It provides no knowledge of anything that actually exists outside the mind except through the mediation of something else. Mental universals are neither external realities nor knowledge of those realities. Every existing thing has a reality that distinguishes it from everything else and makes it what it is; that reality is not universal. Knowledge of what things have in common is therefore not knowledge of that reality. Thus, the logical syllogism provides no knowledge of the concrete reality of anything, although that is precisely what is sought.

They also criticize analogical reasoning on the grounds that it yields only probable conclusions. They sometimes discuss particular analogical arguments concerning subsidiary questions or fundamental principles whose premises are weak or merely probable. An example is found in the remarks of al-Suhrawardī, who was executed for heresy, the author of al-Talwīhāt (The Intimations), al-Alwāh (The Tablets), and Hikmat al-Ishrāq (The Wisdom of Illumination). In his philosophy, he drew upon the Sabian Romans and the Persians